Have you ever visited moon.google.com to look at the map of the moon? Take it down to the level of the normal street level Google maps and you’ll get a little surprise.

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I’m not sure where this originally came from, but being in the newspaper business, I wish I’d thought of doing this trick.

NECA, one of my favorite action figure makers, has announced some of their 2007 line-up.  It contains some great figures that I’m definitely looking forward to:

From myspace.com:

Pirates: At World’s End Series 1 (May)
Jack Sparrow (all new sculpt w/ coat and Beach Base)
Sao Feng (all new w/ Bath House Base)
Pintel (new deco w/ Bath House Base)
Ragetti (new deco w/ Bath House Base)

Pirates: At World’s End Series 1 (August)
Jack Sparrow (all new sculpt w/out coat & deck of Black Pearl Base)
Elizabeth Swann (all new w/ Bath House Base)
Tia Dalma (all new w/ deck of Black Pearl Base)
Figure 4 – TBD

NBX [Nightmare Before Christmas] Series 6/7 (Fall)
At this point we are still deciding how to assort the new figures between the series but here is what was shown in the basic figure category:
Experiment Jack w/ desk & chair
Sally w/ Apron, Cauldron, and Stove
Oogie Boogie (natural color w/ new ripped arm revealing bugs)
Melting Guy
Spiders in Hair Monster
Corpse Kid w/ Corpse Mom
My. Hyde w/ Mini Hydes

Santa Jack w/ Santa Sally 2 pack (includes large snake & various presents)

Jack & Sally on Spiral Hill Boxed Set (new base and new “in love” head expression for Jack & Sally)

Super-Deformed Jack & Sally Vinyl Figures in 6″ and 12″ sizes

Cult Classics – I think we have already covered Jareth, Hannibal v.2, and Reservoir Dogs on here so this is what is new…

Cult Classics 6 (Sept/Oct)
S-Mart Ash
David (Lost Boys) – could be a 2 pack or single carded
Michael (Lost Boys) – could be a 2 pack or single carded
Figure 3 and or 4 – TBD

[...]

Resident Evil Anniversary Collection 2 (Sept)
Tyrant
Crimson Head Zombie (new head and new arms and hands and all new deco)
Hunter
Licker
*More TBA

Castlevania (October)
Simon Belmont
Alucard
Dracula
Succubus

[...]

The most exciting one of the bunch is definitely Jareth from Labyrinth.

Link to the complete list.

From imdb.com:

Saying that corporate parent Viacom has lost patience with the underperformance of MTV Networks, the New York Post reported Sunday, citing several unnamed sources, that the company may lay off as many as 500 employees by the end of the week.

Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. In fact, although it’s terrible news for the 500 folks who are losing their jobs, it’s news that excites me. Perhaps this is a move to turn MTV back into MUSIC Television, not Reality / Teen / Gameshow / Anything-Except-Music Television.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a complete music video on MTV without it being interrupted by commercials, “VJs”, screaming girls, interviews, text scrolling across the screen, “interactive” games, or something else that takes away from the initial concept. I used to love watching music videos on MTV… that is, watching videos made around music that I actually enjoyed listening to. Somehow that concept turned into making music that would sound great as the background for a cool video… which ultimately led to music that was used as the background behind really awful television shows involving dating various family members, searching through rooms belonging to members of the opposite sex, or just being plain stupid.

MTV2 was born as a separate channel to bring the music back to MTV. Now, you can’t even find music videos on MTV2 anymore. It’s almost always playing some of the older inane shows that ran on MTV. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a 2 hour block of music at 3am that’s interrupted by commercials between every other song.

With MySpace, YouTube, and iTunes currently ruling the music/video scene, it’s no wonder that MTV is planning on firing a bunch of their staff. Maybe they’ll actually hire someone with some creativity… someone who is daring enough to put the music back on the air like they did initially in the early 80s.

Link

From apple.com:

Lionsgate and Apple® today announced that movies from Lionsgate will be available for purchase and download on the iTunes® Store www.itunes.com starting today. iTunes customers will be able to purchase blockbuster Lionsgate films like “Terminator 2,” “LA Story,” “Basic Instinct,” “The Blair Witch Project” and “Dirty Dancing” and more than 150 titles coming to iTunes this month.

Now if only they’d start offering DRM-free, full DVD quality video, I might actually think about buying one or two.  I just can’t bring myself to purchase something that is locked down to iTunes and is lesser quality than the DVD I can easily buy from a local or online store, especially when older DVD titles are discounted so heavily.

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